Totally Stockholm 1
Festival director Melissa Lindgren Ok, so can you
run us through the line-up quickly for this year’s festival? Sure! We’re very proud to announce the largest programme in Tempo’s history and there´s so much I’m excited about. We have a brand new section for culinary docs called ’Reality Bites’ where we thematically curate film and food to a sensational experience. I’m such a big foodie myself so this is a bit like a dream come true for me. As usual we’ll present the most interesting international work from the past year including festival buzz films like Oscar-nominated Hale County, This Morning This Evening and award winning Cassandro the Exotico, about the first openly gay lucha libre wrestler with the same name. I’m also looking forward to all the amazing guests coming to the festival. Tempo aims to be that bridge between the film and the spectator and to introduce international filmmakers to our lovely audience is certainly one of the privileges of working with the festival. We are all about the conversation that follows a screening and are happy to have Q&As after almost all screenings. Finally I have to mention our audio documentary section that often gets overlooked in the program. I’m especially looking forward to our sound sauna, hot audio docs in an even hotter environment and Short Dox Radio, our competition for short audios docs under three minutes. This year marks the festival’s 20th anniversary, and the theme for it is therefore ‘Heritage’. How does it feel to reach that milestone, and how is ‘Heritage’ reflected in this year’s festival? It feels great to finally turn 20 and to be able to do it with such a large celebration. We really want to acknowledge that fact that we’ve been an important part of Sweden’s cultural scene for such a long time. The main theme “Heritage” will of course look back on our own heritage but also look to the future and how we can use our platform to create change. The theme will also be depicted in many of the documentaries in the program. Some of my favourites are The Silence of Others about the open wounds left after the Franco regime in Spain and Hamada centred around three young adults in a refugee camp in the Sahara Desert, told with both humour and depth. The festival opens with Raggarjävlar, why did that feel like the choice to go with to get the festival started? When we first watched Raggarjävlar (The Swedish Greasers) it felt very fresh to Swedish documentaries. The director Sebastian Ringler has primarily made music videos in the past and the beginning of the film has that same pulse and action. But as the story unfolds we get to know a part of the Swedish society very rarely depicted on film. The characters are extremely brave and open and in the end we’ve fallen in love both with them and with the subculture we all love to hate. Finally, now that the festival has turned 20, how would you like to see it develop into the next 20 years? I’m looking forward to seeing what Tempo can do in the future. I think that the festival has such a wonderful foundation to build on mixing great documentaries with great conversation. Even though Tempo has grown a lot since the start I still think the festival has a family feel to it. I recognise many from our audience and I would like to keep that atmosphere of a festival where everyone can feel welcome. In politically harsh times I think this is even more important. Documentary storytelling poses an amazing power to impact the viewer and create change. We’ve seen great examples of that in the past and I’m sure we’ll see more in the future. I believe that now more than ever we’re in need of inspiration and brave voices. Tempo as a platform, a festival and a voice of its own has an important part to play here and I’m looking forward to see what the future holds. Tempo, March 4-10, various venues. 9 Photo: Katriina Mäkinen